Non-fiction

The Island Builders of the Pacific – Walter Ivens – First Edition 1930 – Prestigious Ownership Scarce Dust Jacket

Published by Seeley, London a first edition 1930 in very good condition with full dust jacket. Prestigious relevant ownership.

Title continues … “How and Why the People of Mala Construct their Artificial Islands, the Antiquity and Doubtful Origin of the Practice, with a Description of the Social Organization, Magic and Religion of their Inhabitants”

The author Walter G. Ivens, at the time, was a Research Fellow of the University of Melbourne and had already authored several respected anthropological works. Very good condition and very rare to find it in its dust jacket.

Thick octavo, 317 pages, 18 illustrations from photographs, three maps of which two are folding and one most interesting sketch map of Mala.

The book covers; North Mala; the Artificial Islands; Social Organisation; Marriage, Women and Children; Ghosts; Priests and Sacrifices; Sharks and Crocodiles; Porpoise and Turtle Hunting; War and Fighting; Burials, Death-feasts and Panpipes; Magic, Divination, Omens, Signs and Dreams; Ceremonies, Tabu, Restrictions and Curses; The North-East lagoon and its People; Gardens and House Building; The People of Morodo; Folk-lore and The Cultures of North Mala.

Ownership stamp of esteemed anthropologist Harold W Scheffler (1932-2015) at Yale and his name written and dated 1960 when he would have been completing his PhD at Chicago where he was a Fullbright scholar. During that period he conducted 18 months field work on the island of Choiseul in the Solomons so this book may have been with him. He joined the Yale faculty in 1963 and his principle research continued in the Solomon Islands and also Vanuatu and among the aboriginal people of Australia focusing on kinship and social organisation. He published many papers in this field. The book has many careful and tidy pencil annotations which could be removed but we have not as we believe it greatly adds to the interest of this copy.

Scarce interesting prestigious owner

$160.00

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Fiji and its Possibilities – Beatrice Grimshaw – First Edition 1907

A first edition published by Doubleday, New York 1907. Published at the same time in London under the title “from Fiji to the Cannibal islands”.

Large tick octavo, 315 pages, original green cloth covered binding, top edge clean gilt. Embossed image of native to front board. A very good, very clean tight copy. Carries the bookplate of Maine educationalist Walter Francis Kimball to the front past down. Despite the title more than Fiji with rather graphic writing from the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) and an unusual ending in the Norfolk Islands

Beatrice Grimshaw (1870 – 1953) was an Irish born travel writer who spent most of her working life in the Western Pacific. In 1904, she was engaged by the London Daily Graphic to report on the Pacific Islands and she did so sailing around in her own cutter. She was commissioned to write for the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa and Tonga. This book on Fiji was one of her earlier works. In 1907, she went to Papua and remained there for most of the next 27 years becoming a close friend of Sir Hubert Murray.

Nicely illustrated with over 80 photographic images including a frontispiece of the author. Contents cover … history of Fiji; the days of Thakombau; Fijian language; native food and “how to drink yanggona”; hospitality and introduction to mbill-mbill; Fijian fun and a night on the Wainikoro; Ndreketi and the Fijian smart society; the last of the cannibals; the vanilla planters; history of the New Hebrides; dynamite fishing; coffee and a plan to eat a Planter; Malekula an uncanny place; the marriage market; a stronghold of savagery; ten stick island; Malekula the outer and inner man; slaughtered traders; the idol dance; interview with the cannibal chief; poisoned arrows; hot times in Tanna; a Council of War; returned labour trouble; up the Volcano and the Valley of Fire; Norfolk Island and the fate of the Mutineers.

Very good copy of key Fiji book – 1907

$90.00

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The Long Labrador Trail – Dillon Wallace – First Edition 1907

A first edition published by The Outing Publishing Company, New York. It was published simultaneously in Toronto. Octavo, 308 pages plus appendix of weather information daily. Nicely illustrated with 29 photographic images, coloured frontispiece and folding map at rear. The beautiful pictorial covers complete a very book. Showing some age but still nice and clean inside and a pretty good copy.

Dillon Wallace (1863-1939) had legal training but loved the outdoors. In 1903, he accompanied Leonidas Hubbard on an exploratory trip through Labrador planning to follow the Naskaupi River to Lake Michikamau where no previous Europeans had trod. They followed the wrong river and got into so much difficulty that Hubbard fell ill and died of starvation. Wallace survived and wrote his first book The Lure of the Labrador Wild published in 1905. In that book, he blamed Hubbard for the mistakes he made leading to his own death. This infuriated his wife.

Wallace planned a much more adventurous expedition still and that is the subject of this book. Hubbard’s wife on hearing of the expedition planned her own, along the same lines and beat Wallace to the final destination by some weeks. She also wrote a book A Woman’s Way Through Unknown Labrador … neither refer to each other!

Wallace in Labrador a second time with success and unmentioned competition.

$120.00

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From the Middle Temple to the South Seas – Alexander – First Edition 1927

A most unusual book, first edition published by Murray, London in 1927. Large octavo, 287 pages in pretty good condition just some ageing to page edges

The author Gilchrist Alexander was a Scottish Barrister who practiced out of the Middle Temple London. After 20 years of perhaps “not enough briefs” he accepted the role as the first Chief police Magistrate in Fiji.

The first chapter is about his conventional career. In Fiji activity takes on a more interesting shape with absconding defendants, piracy, blackbirding and headhunters. The narrative interspersed with observations mainly in Fiji but also the New Hebrides. Nicely illustrated with 25 photographic images.

Unusual account of a legal mind in Fiji

$40.00

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Early Observations of Marquesan Culture 1595-1813 – Edwin Ferdon

First published University of Arizona, 1993. Octavo, 184 pages in very good if not fine condition.

A scholarly work by Edwin Ferdon who as a young man was archaeologist on the Thor Heyerdahl 1955 expedition to Easter Island. The notes and bibliography make it extra useful for those that want to more broadly study the history of the Marquesas.

Ferdon was thorough

$40.00

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Captain Henry Byam Martin R.N. – Polynesian Journal

Published by the Peabody Museum in 1981, Octavo 192 pages beautifully illustrated. A very good copy in a complete dust jacket.

Captain Martin’s first command, H.M.S. Grampus with orders to sail for Hawaii to await further orders which were to sail for Tahiti the French planning to subjugate the island, which they did by “bloody force”.

The actual journal was in the bowels of the British Museum … it is characterised by in the moment observations and a sense of humour regarding the struggle between the French and the British and the oft hopeless position the islanders found themselves in.

The text of an important one time “lost” journal .

$40.00

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The Island Builders of the Pacific – Walter Ivens – First Edition 1930 – Prestigious Ownership Scarce Dust Jacket

Fiji and its Possibilities – Beatrice Grimshaw – First Edition 1907

The Long Labrador Trail – Dillon Wallace – First Edition 1907

From the Middle Temple to the South Seas – Alexander – First Edition 1927

Early Observations of Marquesan Culture 1595-1813 – Edwin Ferdon

Captain Henry Byam Martin R.N. – Polynesian Journal

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